Recorded History
by Tierfal
Summary: Mello wakes up from the best one-night stand in recorded history. The only problem is that Matt's the one lying next to him. Not quite fluff, but not quite anything else, either...
1. Evidence

_Author's Note: As is frequently the case, Eltea was invaluable to the conception of this fic—for starters, she introduced me to the fic that inspired this one, 'The Red Leopard,' by SlvrSoleAlchmst1, which you must read if you haven't. My dearest also beta'd and coaxed me into re-writing the mediocre ending I had before, though you won't know anything about that until we get there. ;)_

* * *

Recorded History

I. Evidence

As Mello awoke, two tastes mingled, fighting for dominance, on his tongue—chocolate and alcohol.

_Shit,_ he thought before he was even fully conscious.

It turned out to be an understatement.

His head throbbed. He sat up, reeling as it spun with the gathering momentum and the wild, unbalanced unpredictability of a tire swing. He looked down. Matt lay quietly—dare he say _contentedly_?—with one arm bent under the pillow, his hair in exquisite disarray. His back was to Mello, making it impossible to see his face, but the faint bruises, the light scratches, and the way the nubs of his vertebrae made Mello's stomach drop all over again spoke volumes.

"Shit," Mello said aloud.

Matt stirred, but his breathing stayed soft and even.

Mello stared at him, so happy for a moment that his mind went utterly blank.

Then, with horror, mortification, and the rest of the usual crew rushing into the space, he pushed the twisted sheets out of the way and climbed cautiously free to scour the wreckage of empty bottles and crumpled wrappers for his pants.

_Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit._

Through the hammering of his pulse in his temples, through the bile hovering halfway up his throat, through the prickling of the cold on his skin, he started to recall hazy bits and pieces, blurred scenes, moments fraught with mental static and poor sound-quality, like the television of his memory was on the fritz.

_Piece of shit,_ he thought helplessly.

He was remembering hot, clashing kisses, fiery fingertips, wet and warmth, and a pleasure deep and drenched in alcohol—steeped in truth. Saturated with satisfaction.

"Piece of _shit_," he whispered plaintively to a pair of pants that were not his, shoving them out of the way, pawing through the detritus-evidence scattered everywhere.

His burning eyes finally spotted the distinctive glint of the leather when a beam of halfhearted sunlight bested the cracked blinds and squirmed under the bed. Mello crawled, reached, snatched, and tugged. In his panic he almost put them on backwards.

That would've been awkward.

He grabbed a shirt out of the closet at random, found himself with a faded band T-shirt, and slung it over his head, not giving a shit, for the first time in recorded history, who he might be advertising for.

It was unfortunate that he couldn't push up his sleeves, because he immediately knelt and went at the monumental mess with the kind of fury that only an extraordinarily-hungover Mihael Keehl could wield.

The empty bottles stood in a line by the door like sentinels, the comforter lay placidly draped over the armchair, and Matt's clothes were folded neatly at the foot of the bed, his stupid-ass, sexy-as-hell goggles perched on top—all by the time Matt moaned into the pillow.

Mello was in the process of replacing the Queen shirt—should have cared who the fuck he was advertising for after all; he'd barely stifled the scream of agony when his beleaguered brain had processed the information—with more appropriate attire. He spared Matt a glance. Goggle Boy wasn't sentient yet. He had a little more time.

The hanger rattled quietly back onto the bar, and Mello strode to the saluting vessels in the doorway, gathered them in his arms with difficulty, and sidled out into the hall to smuggle the lot of them down to the trash.

No evidence. No trace. Matt had decided to sleep in the nude, and Mello had left him some privacy to get up accordingly. Anything further, anything involving strangled cries and humid, labored breathing, anything involving tongues dripping chocolate and sweet sweat mixing where flushed skin met, was pure invention, courtesy of an overactive imagination.

Mello took the stairs. No need to hurry back.

"_Let's get fuckin' wasted." Matt had a diplomatic solution for everything._

"_I'm in if you're buying."_

"_Stingy son of a bitch."_

_Mello snickered. "Damn straight."_

_It seemed like Matt paused—just for a second, but he did._

"Shit," Mello sighed, and the gloomy gray of the stairwell's cement walls pushed his voice back at him. It sounded petulant and pathetic.

Shit. Just… _shit_.


	2. Foil

_Author's Note: Today's game is called "Spot the Bluntest Line Tierfal Has Ever Written"!_

* * *

II. Foil

When Mello returned, having disposed of the most damning of the evidence, Matt was leaning against the doorframe that led to the bedroom, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. By some small, charitable miracle of foresight, he'd thrown some pants on.

The miracle only extended so far, however; he hadn't strung his belt through the loops, and as a result, the jeans hung precariously low, underscoring his abs, the muscles of his chest flexing as he shifted his position, one familiar hand rising to scratch absently at the coppery stubble just starting to emerge along his jaw—

_Shit._

Mello focused intently on Matt's eyes, which were drastically blue and slightly bloodshot.

"What the fuck happened?" Matt managed to slur.

"We got wasted," Mello answered patiently. "Just like you wanted."

He figured he was doing very well until he remembered that he was standing two steps into the kitchen, poised like a cat about to bolt.

Matt scrubbed at his face. "What'd I do?"

Mello very abruptly coerced himself into motion in order to become extremely interested in the refrigerator and its contents. "Better question," he interposed. "How do you feel?"

"Fucking _dead_."

Mello poured—or, rather, sloshed—a glass of orange juice and extended it to Matt, trying not to get too close.

"Get some fluids."

Belatedly, he realized that _fluids_ might not have been the best phraseological selection he'd ever made, given where his mind went.

Shit.

Well, he was fucked, in just about every sense of the word.

Matt nursed the juice gingerly, following every sip with a wince. "Fucking _ridiculous_," he managed. "Did I puke? Hang on—"

He stuck two fingers into his mouth. Mello's knees almost gave way, and he clung to the handle of the refrigerator door, praying his intoxicated affiliate wouldn't notice.

Matt withdrew a scrap of silver foil from the inside of his cheek and stared at it dumbly.

"The hell…?"

Matt had been drunk. Matt had been _so_ drunk. He'd been falling over himself, falling over the floor, falling out of his clothes, falling onto the bed— Chocolate ran, dripped, drizzled; Mello licked upwards along the trail trickling from the corner of Matt's mouth—

Mello stuck his head in the fridge. "No clue," he reported.

He imagined that Matt shrugged, and footsteps progressed over to the trash—

Oh, shit. The trash. He hadn't gotten rid of—

"Jesus fucking _Christ_, how much fucking chocolate did we _eat_?"

"I dunno," Mello muttered. He squeezed his eyes shut, but that only encouraged the vivid images parading across his eyelids. Sweet, sweet melted chocolate smeared over jutting collarbones—

"No wonder I want to puke," Matt mumbled. He tossed himself down at the kitchen table and gazed morosely at his orange juice. After a moment, he looked up at Mello curiously. "Do you remember—?"

"Nope," Mello responded, voice tight, pants tighter. "Not a thing." He dove for the trash bag. "Here, lemme just take that down—"

The dismal dimness of the stairwell was comforting now—refreshing, reassuring. The chill of the cement-enclosed air didn't hurt either. Goosebumps rose on Mello's bare arms. He took deep breaths to clear his head, his mind, his irrevocably dirty thoughts—

Their hasty replacement, while painfully innocent, wasn't actually all that constructive.

"_You," Matt mumbled, grinning dumbly, "are the—cutest—thing—ever." He punctuated each word by tapping his fingertip on the end of Mello's nose._

"_No," Mello retorted, "_you_ are."_

"_Nuh-uh. You're blond, and you wear leather, and you get all riled up about the stupidest shit—"_

"_Yeah? Well, you're a redhead, and you wear goggles and stripes. I mean, like, where'd you even get those frigging goggles?"_

_Matt was quiet for a moment, thinking. His eyes were faintly cloudy, and there was a little line between his eyebrows. "My—b'fore I was at Wammy's. My first foster dad. He loved flyin' planes, and I loved going up with him, only I was like six, see, so obviously I couldn't fly one. So when I asked to, he laughed, and he found me the goggles, and he said 'Someday, you can.'"_

_Mello set his head down on Matt's chest. "What happened to him?"_

_Matt shifted. "I dunno. I just got stuck somewhere else. He's prob'ly still out there, flyin' planes, givin' out goggles and shit."_

And shit.


	3. Addiction

_Author's Note: Mello is a silly boy.  
_

_That will be all. XD_

* * *

III. Addiction

Mello trudged back up the stairs, panting a little now.

_Panting_ was like _pants_, and _pants_ was like _no pants_, and _no pants_ conjured up a very specific image.

Shit.

Speaking of pants, Matt was still wearing a close-fitting specimen of them and nothing more when Mello reentered the apartment, the gritty dinginess of which was now permanently ameliorated with damp memories of—

There would be no thinking about that. Ever. Again.

A glass lined with flecks of orange juice pulp lurked in the sink, and Matt had shoved a new bag into the cracked plastic trashcan. Mello loitered in the kitchen, attempting to avoid getting a second eyeful of Matt bent over the bed to strip it—another loaded word—of its chocolate-stained sheets, because a single eyeful was sufficient to convey how low Matt's unbelted pants were riding, how smooth and tempting were the contours of his back, and how goddamn _fuckable_ he looked with his hair in his face.

And another eyeful would make Mello want another still. And another after that. Pretty soon, he'd never stop looking.

Enjoyable as that would be, it would almost certainly prove extremely awkward.

Mello stuck his head in the freezer. There were bags of frozen corn in there. And maybe some sanity.

"Hey…" came a voice from the bedroom.

Shit.

Mello shut the fridge and obeyed the summons. In attempting not to notice that Matt was hitching up his jeans with his left hand, he looked at Goggle Boy's right.

From half-curled fingers dangled a black- and red-beaded rosary.

_Shit_ didn't even _begin_ to cover it.

"Hmm," Mello said, voice tauter than a tightrope. "I was wondering where that was. Guess I dropped it while we were playing whatever video game that was last night."

Matt fingered the cross, running a thumb up and down its length. Mello's blood was pounding in his ears.

"I don't remember that," Matt reported idly.

It took a great deal of willpower not to sigh in relief. "Eh, you won; I lost; the usual. Nothing too exciting. And you were already _really_ drunk, so I guess maybe it was kind of impressive as far as that goes."

"I do remember," Matt remarked, still admiring the crucifix cradled guilelessly in his fingers, "your hair getting tangled in it when I tried to take it off."

There was an excruciating pause.

"What?" Mello managed weakly, trying to laugh. "Why would you—?"

Matt looked at him, suddenly weary—weary and something else.

"Don't fuck with me, Mello," he said. "If you don't want it to happen again, it won't, all right? That's fine. I don't give a shit. End of story. Forget it."

He pitched the rosary at its rightful owner, who fumbled to catch it, and then returned to bunching the sheets, slightly more vigorously than was strictly necessary.

Mello swallowed. The round wooden beads dug into his palm, pushed there by his clenched fingers. It was like they were trying to tell him something.

Like not to be a fucking idiot, maybe.

There was just one thing that the smarmy, insinuating rosary beads had not considered, and that was that Mihael Keehl _was_ a fucking idiot sometimes. Fairly frequently, in fact, when it came to shit like this.

He turned around and retreated to the kitchen, walking on feet he couldn't feel.

His empty hand opened the cupboard, and he scanned the second shelf from the top. There was one bar of chocolate left, a small one. He retrieved it, peeled the wrapper back, and broke off a bite.

The first few squares stuck in his throat, but the rest went down easier.

He took the stairs down to the ground floor again, but this time he didn't stop at the garage that housed the dumpsters—nor did he stop at the street, nor did he stop at the first intersection, or the second.

He did pause at the first convenience store he encountered, in the interest of purchasing a veritable shitload of chocolate.

"_You're an addict." There was a hint of a giggle in Matt's laugh._

"_Am not. I just friggin' love chocolate, s'all."_

"_You're frigging _in_ love with chocolate."_

"_That's 'cause it tastes amazing, dipshit."_

"_Lots of things taste amazing, and you're not addicted to them."_

_Mello licked upwards along Matt's breastbone, slowly and meticulously. Matt writhed, laughing helplessly. Ticklish, of course._

"_I'm addicted to _you_," Mello announced._

Mello considered taking the elevator when he returned, given that he was now loaded down with paper bags full of bottles of booze, but he kind of liked the stairs, if only for their knack for postponing the inevitable.


	4. Shirts

_Author's Note: Game time again—"Spot the 'Casablanca' Reference"!_

* * *

IV. Shirts

Matt's back had a shirt on it by the time Mello staggered in and slung the bags of booze onto the kitchen table.

Mello tried not to think _Damn_, but he couldn't help himself.

Matt withdrew his head from the refrigerator, turned, and raised an eyebrow. "What's all that?"

He was wearing the Queen shirt. The stupid bastard was wearing the stupid _Queen_ shirt.

Of all the shirts in all the closets in all the world, he picked the _Queen_ shirt.

"It's booze," Mello answered as autopilot kicked in. "It's a shitload of booze, 'cause I drank half of yours last night, so I figure it's only fair I buy you some more."

Matt stared at him. Mello stared back.

Matt blinked first.

"Thank you," he said.

"No problem," Mello replied. He turned to the table, fought his way into the plastic bag amongst the paper ones, and unearthed eight bars of chocolate for his pains. These he collected and jammed into the cupboard. "Got to restock the important stuff," he noted.

Matt didn't respond. Bare feet _snk_ed across the linoleum as he went back into the bedroom, and the sheet-less mattress creaked as he sat.

Mello wasn't feeling brave enough to approach him yet.

_Matt slipped on a stranded wrapper, pinwheeled his arms, and fell onto the bed, succumbing immediately to a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Mello lingered in the doorway, the neck of the brandy bottle loosely between two fingers, and watched him for a moment—just watched, just looked for the sake of seeing._

_Matt beamed at him, tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes. Red and blue. Primary colors supplemented by the warm pink in his cheeks, stark against the white of the sheets and the dark in the corners, a dark that wouldn't care, that wouldn't tell, that wouldn't whisper…_

"_Undressing me with your eyes?" Matt purred._

_Mello wasn't. Or at least, he hadn't been until he got the suggestion._

"_Damn it, Matt," he groaned, throwing his free hand melodramatically over his eyes._

"_Here," Matt offered, bouncing to his feet and taking the hem of his shirt in both hands. "Let me help."_

It had been much too easy after that.

No, that wasn't true. It had been easy all along—easy to love that stupid, goggle-toting, piece of shit boy, him and his big dumb grin and his bright blue eyes and his wide-open candor.

Mello fingered his crucifix and stacked chocolate bars, over and over and in different patterns. He felt like _Near_, and the fact that it didn't make him want to puke his fucking guts up seemed like a pretty incontrovertible indicator that something was horribly wrong.

_Damn it, Matt._

He didn't like this whole emotional honesty thing at all. He supposed that wasn't too surprising, given that it combined two things that didn't agree with him.

Glowering at the refrigerator magnets, he wondered if perhaps the struggle with it was part of the reason that he was starving to death. Or maybe that was because he'd eaten nothing but a little bit of chocolate today.

Toss-up.

Mello made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some chocolate milk (using approximately a quarter of the bottle of chocolate syrup) and went into the bedroom.

Matt was sitting in the chair, the comforter Mello had thrown there laying over his legs, and looking out the window, pale smoke tracing a lazy path upwards to settle in a hazy halo around his head.

"What?" he asked around the cigarette.

Mello battled the peanut butter clinging tenaciously to the roof of his mouth. Milk reinforcements were required.

When the good fight had been fought, he answered, "Changed my mind."

"Taking the booze back so we can't get drunk and fuck around again tonight?"

Mello hesitated. Matt was being sarcastic—_bitingly_ sarcastic. This was _mean_ sarcasm. Matt didn't use _mean_ sarcasm, if he used sarcasm at all.

But he was using it now. And he was _good_ at it.

Shit.

Mello took a deep breath. _Rise above that, _he told himself firmly. _Rise above it_. Retaliation would just send this whole thing spiraling out of control and careening off the road, onto the fast track to the Land of Even Worse.

"I wanna talk about it," he said.

Matt didn't move. "The booze?"

_RISE ABOVE THAT, TOO, GOD DAMN IT._

"You know exactly what," Mello gritted out.

Matt said nothing. Cigarette smoke swirled.

"Look," Mello persisted, discovering that it was impossible to roll one's eyes and look sincere at the same time, "can I just… I don't want to forget. Put it that way. I don't want it to be the end of the story. I give a shit."

Matt took a long drag and then looked at him, intently and unflinchingly. "You're getting crumbs on the carpet," he declared.

Mello's stomach lining turned to lead.

_Fucking asshole piece of shit son of a bitch—_

"Fuck you, Matt," he snapped, turning on his heel and going for the door.

"You already did," Matt called unconcernedly after him, the echoes following Mello down the stairs.

* * *

_Author's Note: Eltea, my beautiful beta goddess, adds, "They'll always have Wammy's…"_


	5. Diplomacy

_Author's Note: Extra thanks go out to Eltea for helping immensely with this version of the ending—and with Mello-approved insults!_

_It's my birthday. How 'bout a pony?_

_No? Perhaps a review, then? 8D_

* * *

V. Diplomacy

It was fortunate that Mello had thought to leave his glass of chocolate milk behind, because he ended up sitting in the park pouting until the sun went down.

The park in question was pretty unimpressive. The paint on the benches was peeling, the playground equipment was decaying rather precipitously, and the grass was dying, presumably from some combination of drought and neglect. The whole scene seemed tired, somehow—worn out. Worn down.

Stupid fucking _Matt_.

"I hate you," Mello muttered.

A woman on the other side of the street glanced at him, alarmed, and he glared at her until she ducked her head and hurried off.

After that, he sat quietly, elbows on his knees, looking at his hands. It was time to step back and evaluate. To be calm. Equable. Impartial. Like Mr. Rogers. All he needed was a wool sweater, and he'd be set.

Of course, wool sweaters were the nastiest thing this side of _nasty_.

In any case… _Question One:_ What exactly had he done?

_Answer:_ Gotten sloshed, slept with his best friend, attempted to deny it, and then implied that he hadn't enjoyed it.

Which obviously he hadn't. At all. Not even a little.

…shit.

Time for _Question Two:_ How was he going to fix this?

_Answer:_ Chocolate.

No.

Booze?

_Hell_ no.

…diplomacy?

Damn it.

_Question Three:_ How was he going to get Matt to take off his shirt again, and soon?

_Answer:_ Who the fuck was writing these questions?

Mello rubbed his face, groaning. It was getting dark, and this was an unkind part of town, particularly for slender boys with long hair who waltzed around dressed in form-fitting leather.

Mello was stupid, but he wasn't naïve.

He heaved himself up and started back towards the apartment complex in which Matt's sad little world spun on its sad little axis, his feet heavy, his heart heavier still.

Matt was sitting on the bed, which was once again possessed of sheets, and tapping away at his handheld, another cigarette between his lips. Mello reprised his position in the doorway.

"I want to talk to you," he informed Goggle Boy.

"So talk," Matt muttered.

Mello drew a deep breath. "I… am…"

_Sorry._

_Horny._

_Really fucking stupid._

_Totally and irreversibly in love with you, you stupid piece of shit._

"…hungry."

Shit.

Matt snorted. "So go make yourself another sandwich."

God damn it.

Fuck sandwiches; Mello needed chocolate—_stat_. Intravenously, if possible.

"Sorry for trying," he muttered, turning on his heel. He went to the cupboard, flung it open, and stole the top off of his chocolate-bar pyramid. The wrapper apparently valued its life, as it yielded to his scrabbling fingers immediately.

Reeking of his moodiness, he sat down at the table, folded his arms, and snapped off squares of chocolate, glaring at the tabletop as if it, too, had personally offended him in a variety of ways, most of which didn't really bear thinking about.

Matt came in just before half the chocolate was gone, hands buried in his pockets, the weight of them pushing his pants just a little bit lower.

Mello was developing quite the love-hate relationship with those pants.

"Hey, so…" Matt glanced at the fridge, at the floor, and at just about everything except Mello's face. "I… am… sorry… too."

The struggle fell somewhere between admirable and absurd.

"I've been kind of a dick," Matt went on.

Guy sure knew how to pick a word.

"And… yeah. Guess we should sit down and talk about this like adults or something."

Mello set his toe against the seat of the other chair and pushed it out. "Or something," he agreed.

Matt took the offered chair, but he quickly proceeded to focus exclusively on a lone napkin stranded in a cemetery of crumbs.

Accordingly, Mello shoved his own chair back, got up, and went to the fridge for some milk.

"_Question for you," Mello mumbled._

"_Shoot," Matt murmured back, eyelashes dipping onto his cheeks._

_God damn it. This was a minefield if he'd ever seen one._

"_I, um… was wondering something."_

"_Mm… what?"_

"_D'you—well—is this for fun, and shit, or d'you—love me?"_

_Matt laughed softly. "That's a stupid-ass question, Mello."_

_Anger flared hotly in Mello's chest. "Well, you got a stupid-ass answer, or what?"_

"_Relax, Mello." The gentle calm of Matt's voice made his extremities tingle. "I've loved you since… I dunno. Ever."_

"_Y—you have? But why…?"_

_The laugh again—an unobtrusive sound, but so extravagantly precious that Mello strained desperately to hear it. "How the hell could I _not_?"_

Mello wasn't exactly unaccustomed to drunken lies—or drunken exaggerations, perhaps.

This one hurt, though. This one stabbed the red-hot fire poker of betrayed indignity straight through his eye.

Or perhaps not _straight_ through, given the circumstances.

He poured himself a tall glass of milk and then replaced the carton in the refrigerator door.

Chair legs squealed on old linoleum as Matt stood. Mello ignored him and indulged the inimitable combination that was milk and chocolate.

"Mello," Matt gritted out, "knock it off."

Mello spared him a glance. "Your head? You wouldn't be able to afford my rates, I'm afraid."

Matt's eyes narrowed, and his hands curled into fists like flowers closing as the sun went down. "Stop being a smarmy bitch."

Anger sparked again. The kindling was set, and the branches were laid; all it took was for one of those embers to catch—

Mello smirked, set his milk down, and licked a fleck of chocolate from his upper lip. "Well, if you weren't such an unabashed little slut," he remarked, "that might be easi—"

"_Piece of shit_!" Matt howled.

Half of a chocolate bar soared in a graceful arc across the room as they dove at each other and collided like warring storm fronts. Mello had taken a set of knuckles to the eye and a knee to the gut before he'd had time to process the situation. Fortunately, Matt had forgotten that Mello's size afforded him something of uncanny speed, to the effect that Mello darted out of his opponent's grip, shoved him onto the floor, and planted a firm hand on either of his shoulders.

He smiled innocently down at the seething boy beneath him. "Are you finished?" he inquired sweetly.

Matt gave a growl that started low in his chest. Then he twisted hard rightward, sending Mello slamming into the nearest table leg. That done, he snagged his fingers in Mello's hair and yanked forcefully, intending to grind his opponent's face into the flooring.

But Mello was ready for that.

He landed a blow of his own on Matt's cheekbone, disregarding the thin, burning dribble of blood meandering down his temple, pinned his unabashed little slut again, clutched two hefty fistfuls of Queen T-shirt, and crushed his mouth to its owner's.

Abruptly, Matt ceased thrashing. His fingers were still twined in Mello's hair, and everything tasted gloriously of chocolate.

Mello was nursing a black eye by the next morning—and a few smaller bruises besides, the acquisition of which had proved much more pleasant.

All told, it was probably the best conclusion to an inebriated one-night stand in recorded history.

Probably.


End file.
